The Coca-Cola Company is known for its very comprehensive brand protection strategy.
This time, The Coca-Cola Company – which also owns the ‘Fanta’ brand – attempted to block the registration of the FANTOLA trademarks for various snacks and beverages, owned by the Russian company Aqualife.
The reason? Coca-Cola argued that FANTOLA was too similar to its earlier FANTA trademarks and could mislead consumers as to the origin of the products.
However, the case did not go as the owner of FANTA had hoped, and the Russian patent office, Rospatent, sided with Aqualife.
One of the arguments put forward by the Russian company was the results of an online consumer survey, which reportedly showed that consumers do not confuse the commercial origin of FANTOLA products with the FANTA brand.
This case demonstrates that when assessing the risk of confusion, it is not only the similarity of the names themselves that matters, but also how the trade mark is perceived by the relevant consumers.
